Comolli: Man United need director of football

Manchester United needs a Director of Football, according to Liverpool's former transfer overseer Damien Comolli.

After United's frustrating and largely unsuccessful transfer season, the man who is responsible for a number of football's best and worst transfers has thrown his voice into an orchestra of negative pundits.

"The issue for Manchester United is that the two most important people at the club in Sir Alex (Ferguson) and David Gill left their positions and new people came in for their first transfer window," Comolli told BBC Radio 5.

"If there was a club in need of a director of football to ease the process for both individuals it was Manchester United.

"David only joined on July 1 which was quite late. For some reason the club weren't prepared or they didn't think it would be that difficult and they ended up in a difficult situation."

Comelli is reputed as the man who signed Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Dimitar Berbatov while at Tottenham, but also as the man behind Liverpool's underwhelming 2011 transfer season when they expensively brought in Craig Bellamy, Jordan Henderson, Stewart Downing and Sebastian Coates, as well as the flop signing of Andy Carroll the period before.

Manchester United missed out on a long list of transfer targets during the recently closed transfer season, only managing to bring in Guillermo Varela from Atletico Penarol and Marouane Fellaini on deadline day from Everton for £27.5 million.